SEWAGE was discharged into Southend’s bathing waters last week as the sewer system struggled to cope with heavy rainfall.

Anglian Water has confirmed outfalls on Three Shells Beach, Jubilee Beach, Leigh Bell Wharf, Chalkwell Beach and Thorpe Bay pumped sewage into the sea on March 8.

The releases were not immediately reported on Anglian Water’s Beach Aware system due to “planned maintenance” on the same day.

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“I was deeply disappointed to learn that Anglian Water’s Beach Aware system – designed to give real time updates on the sewage discharges – failed to work on a day when five overflows were used across our city’s beautiful beaches,” Conservative Southend West MP Anna Firth said.

“It is simply not good enough, and once again highlights the importance of the meeting at the end of this month where I will be holding this company to account on their need to urgently invest in improvements, especially following the £92 million dividend they paid to their owners last year.”

Anglian Water chief executive Peter Simpson will be visiting Southend’s beaches on March 31.

Mr Simpson will meet environmental campaigners from Southend Against Sewage, Environment Agency representatives and Southend West MP Anna Firth.

An Anglian Water spokesperson said: “Last week we carried out planned maintenance and testing on monitoring equipment which is used to detect storm overflows in Southend to ensure that the system was working correctly.  To ensure that false alerts were not issued during this work, the external alert system was temporarily switched off on March 8.

“After heavy rainfall last week, some genuine spills did occur. As we were still undertaking work on our system, we issued manual alerts on this occasion to ensure stakeholders and public were still made aware of any potential impacts to bathing water quality.  This is what led to the delay in notifications. Checks on the system have now been completed and external alert system is now switched back on.”

“All six bathing waters in Southend are classified as Good or Excellent for bathing water quality.”

Storm overflows are a safety valves built into the sewer system to discharge excess sewage when rainfall exceeds capacity to protect properties from flooding and prevents sewage backing up into streets and homes during heavy rain events.